Subways!

Greetings and salutations! Thought I'd forgotten about you? Not so! I've just been either busy or lazy. Sure, I've broken that 'update every day' promise, but I figure I'll at least try to backdate entries so you can see what I've been up to. Still have to upload a few I wrote but didn't get to post.

But enough of that! Let's talk about the present. Today was a rainy day, and therefore a rather dull day.


Well, not dull, actually kinda fun, but I did nothing in particular other than meander around stores downtown. So I was thinking, and feeling rather guilty about the lack of recent updates, and I thought to myself, 'I know! I'll do a little expose on the Beijing subway system! It'll be factual and vaguely informative, if not actually interesting." So behold, the Beijing Subway!



So Beijing has a lovely, newly-renovated subway system. A 2-yuan ticket will get you anywhere around it so long as you don't leave a station, so it's cheap AND convenient! A lot of the stations could use air conditioning, but it has a major advantage over the Tube, at least, in that all the subway cars themselves are air conditioned!

Olympic security means that you have to stick any bags you have through a little x-ray scanner, like so:


Aaaaand... that's as far as I got. As I took that last picture, a security lady glared at me and crossed her fingers: no photos allowed. I meekly put away my camera and went about my business. But see, this is exactly what I was talking about a week ago: excessive, ridiculous security measures. What exactly is so sensetive about the great and glorious people's subway that means I can't take a photo of the station? I mean, come on. It's not like it's privileged information. Thousands of people are in there every day. Jumping the gun a bit there, guys.

Blah. In summary, the Tube is better.